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Khamenei: The Iron Ayatollah

Workers put the final touches on a mural of Iran’s long-serving supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in Tehran’s Revolution Square in February 2012. Majid Saeedi/Getty Images

A younger Khamenei, then president, donned a military uniform in 1981. AP/File

Khamenei listened to a speaker in northeastern Iran in October. Office of the Supreme Leader/AP

Iranian worshipers, holding posters of the supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei and late revolutionary founder Ayatollah Khomeini, chanted slogans against the US and Israel in a pro-Palestinian rally in Tehran in November. Vahid Salemi/AP

A Lebanese man stands in a bunker at a Hezbollah war museum in southern Lebanon with posters of the ayatollahs on the wall – evidence of Iran’s influence in the region. Hussein Malla/AP/File

Deep inside an old Tehran political prison, three turns off a dark corridor and through a small gap, lies a bleak cell for solitary confinement. Too narrow for a prisoner to extend his arms, it was once the cell of the man who today holds the official title in Iran, "God's deputy on earth."